Monday, 23 February 2009

When looking at the storage of the harvested rain water the automatic assumption is that itwould be outside. I want to see if i can bring it inside as to me it would help me to see it as cleaner as its not subjected to the dirt of the outside and garden etc.

I had originally been keen to put it up in the attic and link it in with the water tank etc so pump etc could easily be adjusted. There are similar product which are around which i have already noted which act almost like top up tanks etc. However as the rain guttering is ofetn at the same level as the floor of an attic it would still require a pump to pump it back up into the tank in the attic. As a result i am now looking at weather it is possible to locate it in house for example in the kitchen so it can easily be linked up to the kitchen taps/sink.

The next step is to find a way of designing something which doesnt look like just a big tank. It therefore needs to be desirable enough to be out in plain view in a house or alternatively small enough to be able to be easily stored.

Monday, 16 February 2009

This thing has been rejected however i couldnt get access to internet while in hospital - stupid infection.

So while in hospital it gave me a lot of time to think, i noticed that they are unusually strict with what you can bring in and what state it is (sketch book proved to be a queationed item - dont know why), to the type of water you drink - always filtered, never tap, they even had me brush my teeth with filtered water. When asked why the nurses couldnt answer apart from the comment that it was healthier. I then found an article in the telegraph stating that vitamin defficiencies could relate to some of the most common modern illness's such as cancer and degenerative illness's linked to aging.

Suppliments can help, i myself am forced to take many to help with my condition including iron, k tissue salts and kelp. The hospital have put me on a tonic called Floradix which has pretty much every essential vitamin in it that a person could need as it helps fill in gap when struggling to eat foods. As a result of this i am still keen to move forward with my idea of a natural harvested, vitamin added water supply in the house.

Thursday, 12 February 2009

This thing has been a bit neglected the last few days with all this naff weather iv managed to pick up one of the colds that has been going around. I now cant talk and am in agony. As i say this yet more of the lovely freezin cold white stuff is falling from the sky.

I have managed to get a hold of a few other charities about what is in the food packages that they send but they are often extreamly vaigue. However being ill i have noticed that i am chugging back the vitamin boosted drinks to try and help my immune system. i have hit a huge issue that with my throat being swollen so much i am really struggling to take my tablets let alone eat. I found myself forced to grind my tablets up and put them into drink so i could take them. This is not the first time i have had to do this either and i think the option of being able to have it just in your tap water would be so benificial as at the moment liquids is about all i can have.

Tuesday, 10 February 2009

After speaking to the Red Cross about their food packages, it arose that they attampt to make the food as balanced as possible, however they do buy the food in the country which they are sending to which makes sense certainly in a financial term but i did want to question that in places such as the heart of africa how balanced can the rations be?

They also said if there are vitamin deficiencies they would tend to just send suppliments in the form of tablets. Is this nessicarily be the best method ? It was also brought up that they tend to use the same filtered water for personal hygine more than drinking etc and so added vitamins could be lost on this sort of cause.

I feel that the form of product i am looking at is certainly based more in the 1st world however i am still keen for it to be adaptable for 3rd world. I feel there is a gap in the market right now in terms of health drinks. We are increasingly becoming health concious hence the popularity of products such as VitaminWater. So why not recycle water and save money by making your own health drink catered to your needs !?

I have tried to contact some on the more major world charities to find out what sort of foods and vitamins are in the food packages which they send.

I have quite taken to the aspect of recycling rain water into drinking water with vitamins in it. I have many vitamin deficencies myself including anemia, i try to counter this by diet and suppliment tablets but i had to consider what i would do if my diet options were restriced. It could be ideal for me if it was always in my drinking water so i didnt have to bother. This made me then think of food rationing and parcels which are sent to refugees etc. I have been told that they aim to be as balanced as possible but mostly local supliers are used which can limit what can be included. I think some research is required

"Students at one of Britain's biggest universities have become the first in the country to ban bottled still water from all their bars, cafes and shops, sacrificing annual profits of £32,000.

A referendum at Leeds University has voted overwhelmingly to phase out the product by the end of next year, to allow campus stores to absorb the loss of their biggest-selling line.

More than 200,000 bottles of still water were sold by the university union's outlets last year to students, whose bags and backpacks habitually have the plastic containers peeping from pockets. National sales of bottled water have risen rapidly in the last decade and now account for 5% of all drinks purchased"

I saw this on a another persons blog and it sparked of a memory from high school. Our school was all for reducing and reusing water. Thier cause had actually came from the respect of trying to get students to not drink fizzy juice and encourage healthier aletnatives. They did this by giving us all free sports water bottles and setting up water fountins around school. they then made it a rule that only water could be drunk while in class. You have to remember this was in the start of the year 2000 so quite a while ago and views may have changed but i remember this scheme going bown the pan pretty fast, you cant force a view or opinion on someone.

I believe the only way to achive a successful result from this project is to try and educate people and address their views and try to alter their perception rather than tell them its wrong.

i have stolen this link of off a fellow PD students blog (sorry stephanie) We are all very well aware about others struggles for safe drinking water especially in 3rd world countries. Maybe this could be a combined cause project? Where something her is a cool gadget as such in Britain it could be something extreamly benificial and importnant in a 3rd world country ?

Could this be linked into the use of vitamins in water (although not in the way which Vitamin Water attempt to do) but intead in a prectical and useful manner. People can survive and estimated 3 weeks without food but only around 3 days without water, so could it be combined that safe water was available and so even if there was limited food eg rations people would still get all the vitamins they required?

I saw this link on another blog by a woman called piper terret. She writes a blog called the frugal life and it is extreamly good.

The link is actually to the times, and discusses taking snow off of the fence adding milk, sugar and vanilla to make snow ice cream, i would not think to do this as i would be concerned for the safety of it but it has had surprisingly good feedback if you scroll down to the comments.

I wonder if you could link this to the concept of added vitamins to harvested water. For example so if yo are anemic you could add iron to your water out of the tap so you dont need to remeber to take tablets etc.

One interesting thing to notice is the amount of sugar in what is supposedly good for you water! This is discussed further on this website as the benefits of additive in water are brought into question.

Thursday, 5 February 2009

P.s We are due to have a total of 7mm of the white stuff today, however from going out and measureing we have closer to the region of 3cm. Just think of all that water going to waste when over 40% of your household water usage can utilise weather conditions such as these and tuesdays heavy rain !!

With the huge amount of snow falling today and plumeting temperatures i was wondering whether you can run energy off of the filtration of water? Or heat filtered water? There is a technique called distilation which involves boiling the water and then condensing the steam however this requires huge amounts of energy to do - not exactly the point of this project when i want to look at conservation and recycling.

Loads of people are doing the survey with some very interesting results - the comment boxes are proving to be very revealing about the person who has filled it in. It does seem to be a topic on which many have strong views. Comments about why filter when i can buy bottled has a very simple response as its a cheaper alternative for yourself but also that is all bottle water is filtered - why pay extra for a brand name !?

Many already filter their water so it may be worth sending around another questionair to see views on inhouse circulation of water for example tap water first, then showering water, then water for washing machines etc then for either the garden or toilet. I have seen this demonstrated somewhere i shall have to see if i can find it again.

This is a system in California which takes toilet water filtering to the extream. Although very unaffectionatly called 'toilet to tap' it is still an interesting concept. However would it work in Britain ? Could it be done on a larger scale ? Does it nessicarily have to be a toilet to tap why can it not work in a life cycle sysem where it starts at tap and progresses down to toilet via in house filtering and then toilet going for proper filtering afterwards ?

This article brings quite a few areas of interest to the front. It researches into the 'yuk' factor of thinking of drinking recycled water with particular interest in the treatment of sewage for drinking.

Its hard to think that with all this rain and snow besieging this country that it wasnt that long ago we (well some areas of england) were concered about running out of water ! As in May 2006 there was a drought order declaired in England.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4772373.stm

This was then followed in June with a huge record breaking heat wave across the same area.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5193486.stm

I think this clearly demonstrates the influence and effect which climate change is having on our country. With this ontop of increasing economic worries surely it makes sense to recycle your water to save on your finances !?

Tuesday, 3 February 2009

Yet again Aberdeen being in Scotland has decided to go under water with rain, i swear its not stopped since yesterday afternoon ! Either way i am going to use this to my advantage and track how much rain falls over the rest of this week. I had tried to set up my own rain water gauge but the seagulls promptly attacked it last night and the other one at university got knock over.

I have found this site which gives predictions for rain fall but also includes other factors of interest such as temperature etc.

http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/FREE/today.asp?zipcode=aberdeen

so today we can see that there is predicted to be a total of 11.8 mm or rain !! with a further 14.6 mm due for tomorrow so it looks like we shall all be getting very very soggy over the next few days !

Monday, 2 February 2009

Having discussed it through with a few others it came about that there was another product than the hippo roller which did actually filter the water. It is by 3 students who appeared on Dragons Den at Christmas, there are many articles on it. I quite like the design however it looks considerably chunky. I also believe there could be more effiecient methods of water filtration as reverse osmosis doesnt cover all pollutants. I believe this could certainly be expanded upon. I am also skeptical as to whether this form of product would be used in somewhere like britain it looks like something which should reside in a mad hatters labratory!

I found out about the Hippo Roller during the mini feedback last week. I had found it interesting as it had been portrayed that it actually filtered the water. However from reading the website it doesnt, it only asts as a tool to move water. I feel this highlights a missed oppertunity and deffinatly something which i could potentially build upon.

Its reassuring that people are at least making an effort to try and change peoples views, so next question to be asked is why dont people pay more attention to sites like these. Especially in the current economic climate where reclycling and being frugal with resources such as water can save you a lot of water.

I found this story really interesting. It demonstrates my point on peoples view to water and its disposability. We live in a very self dominated society, ie me first. As a result while some horded bottled water others were left with nothing. I has to be questioned why not just by loads of empty bottles and fill them up from the tap as the water supply hadnt yet been affected !?

There should should have been a better push for conserving water, and recycling. I just dont understand why this wasnt done !

For our newest brief we are working with a roto moulding company, we were given the hoice to design a portable tempory shelter/storage solution for a UK refugee or to design for water adaption and conservation.

I have chosen to do the later of the two options as the concept of challenging peoples preconceptions is an interesting one for me.

From the mini brief we were to take insperation from key words including shelter, storage, design for manufacture, climate change, roto moulding, refugee and conservation. I found when doing this project that there was almost a circle of scenarios and links which could be made. The one i am chosing to focus on is the aspect that no matter whether it is a natural disaster (ie flood hurrican) or man made distaster (ie war) one aspect of peoples lifes which is always affected is their water supply, which is often contaminated. I want to design a solution which will be able to filter even the dirtiest of water eg flood water to make it safe to wash and drink.

I want to challenge peoples preconceptions about drinking filtered water. For example very few people when asked would drink filtered flood water over something like tap or bottled. I want to challenge these views and promot resourcefullness and conservation of water within society.

About Me

Im currently in my 4th yr of Product Design at Robert Gordon's University although i graduate very soon. I believe in inclusive design and addressing everyday issues which always get overlooked. I have always had a great love for marketing and believe that a dual disapline approach is needed, its all a matter of understanding, respect and being creative.